Carolina Drama

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Transcript of Carolina Drama

Carolina DramaThe Raconteurs Inciting Incident-Ben

For the most part this verse is literal and not much can be interpreted from it. Billy wakes up in his truck, looks into the house and sees his mother’s boyfriend beating up an old priest. His mother is put in the setting but she is not doing anything. It is made clear that Billy’s brother is not there, making the listener start to wonder where he is. However, it is mainly put to the side from the main conflict of the boyfriend. Also, by this point we know that Billy is the protagonist, he is even the only character with a real name. Rising Action #1-Ben

In the next verse Billy sees that the boyfriend is strongly overpowering the priest but the priest is trying as hard as he can. It’s important for the listener of the song to know that both are fighting their best but the priest is bound to lose of no one helps him. One line quickly states that the boyfriend has a hammer. However, that statement’s not crucial to the story so it isn't mentioned again. At this point in the story it’s hard to determine what’s really going on yet. Rising Action #2-Ben

In this verse you find out through the thoughts of Billy that the priest is his father. There’s no evidence from the story for him to think that but it does get confirmed later. It is especially odd because Billy has never met his father. It was just his immediate response to think that. Rising Action #3-Ben

When Billy finds out the priest is his father he “grabs the first blunt thing he could find, a cold glass bottle of milk that got delivered every morning at nine.” This at first seems like just another lyric, but it does have meaning other that he just picked up a weapon. This is the first of a few references to the overall story. The listener must listen carefully to interpret this meaning. I really like this song because it has a strait forward literal meaning but you can also listen closely and there is a larger story to uncover. Climax-Ben

I would definitely not consider this story to have a “happy ending” nor and ending at all really. After the music picks up it transitions into a very intense moment where the lyrics are gone through very fast and at first it seems unclear, but if you play attention, the story falls into place. Billy breaks in and notices the hectic environment around him. There’s blood on the floor, he locks eyes with the boyfriend, and his mother is antic. The song then briefly acknowledges his father is in a terrible condition. The boyfriend frantically tells Billy the priest attacked his mother. Then for some reason whether he thought the boyfriend was lying, he was just sick of the him, or he was overcome but emotion; Billy made a rash decision and whipped the milk bottle at the boyfriend head presumably killing him. He then yells towards his dad “why’d you have to come back here?”. His mother then finally decides to say something. She tells Billy that his father’s been paying all the bills for a long time. So Billy quickly comes to the conclusion that they should load up the priest in the truck and move away. But he gets interrupted by something that at first is very confusing to the listener. “Just then his little brother came in holding the milkman’s hat and a bottle of gin singing lalalala…” This gives a bit more context to the bottle of milk from before, but it is not over. This is a difficult story to wrap up because there was no real conclusion, just an end. The last verse is slow and more so spoken than sung. It goes as follows “Well now you heard another side to the story but you want to know how it ends. If you must know the truth about the tale then go and ask the milkman.” I did really like this ending because it makes you think about the other milkman references in the story. But this is how I interpret it: the milkman and the brothers are buddies. He gives them liquor and it is a friendly relationship. The priest is not a symbol at all he is just a priest, one who is over come by guilt and pays their bills solely on the guilt. The priest was coming in one morning to drop off the money and the boyfriend confronted him or the other way around but there was a conflict that ended in a bloody fight. So Billy decided he would stop the bad way the boyfriend would treat them, using violence. It just so happens that the little brother was drinking with the milkman at the time. Resolution/Denouement-Ben Introduction-Cameron

In the introduction of the song, we learned about Billy and his family; which introduces his mother and her boyfriend, and his younger brother. Although, he did not seem to trust the boyfriend. For example, in the song it states “he was a triple loser with blue tattoos that were given to him while he was young and a drunk temper that was easy to lose thank god he didn't own a gun.” This leads us to the conflict that was to soon occur. Protagonist-Cameron

Billy is the protagonist because he was the only person to get a name in the story and the readers should be sympathetic to him because what the boyfriend brought on his family. Traits-CameronHe is protective because in the story, after the boyfriend hit the priest (his father) with the hammer Billy wanted that boyfriend dead and would not stop until he succeeded. trait #2 -CameronHe is forgiving because even though his father may have left him when he was young and Billy wanted him to stay with the family and move to Tennessee, he still helped him. However, did not show forgiveness to the boyfriend. Conflict-CameronThe main conflict of the story is Billy versus boyfriend because the boyfriend was the one who seriously injured his father (priest). Also there are some less important conflicts like Billy vs. himself because he needed to stay strong for his father. There is mother versus boyfriend and brother versus boyfriend, as well as boyfriend versus the priest (Billy’s father). Atmosphere-CameronThe atmosphere in this song/story is trust yourself. When the listener first listens to the song, they can feel the tension between Billy and the boyfriend. As the story continues, there is a lot of hatred from the family to the boyfriend but as Billy smashes the milk bottle on the boyfriend’s face, the listener kind of feels relieved that it’s all over and you also feel sympathy for the family. In my mind the atmosphere does fit the plot because it is based on how Billy does not like this man from the start and when the boyfriend hit his father it drove him to a breaking point.